The Michelle Nunn memos: 10 key passages

Their spending plan is built on the assumption that Senate Majority PAC and other Democratic independent expenditure campaigns will spend $8 million and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s independent expenditure arm would spend another $8 million. EMILY’s List made an early commitment to raise at least $1 million for Nunn, one document discloses.

On the other side, they projected that American Crossroads would spend $10 million, and other right-leaning groups would put in $6 million to help the Republican candidate. At that point, they had no idea who would emerge but suspected the Republican candidate himself would spend $17 million, with $8 million from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $5 million more from the state GOP.

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Earlier this month, Nunn made a big public show of calling on each of her potential Republican rivals to pledge to refuse third-party TV ads or outside group spending. They declined.

Late last year, the campaign was weighing whether such a publicity stunt made sense. “There are two major strategies to consider here that cross over between finance, political strategy and communications: running a clean campaign (implications of proposing and signing a ‘no IEs agreement’) and being prepared to use the attacks against Michelle to raise even more money,” said one memo.

“Getting research hits killed” is described as one of the key jobs of any campaign-communications team. Political reporters know that press secretaries sees their job as working the referee, but it’s something else to see this written on paper: “Part of the communications department’s job (in conjunction with research) is to leverage relationships and find the material to push back against negative research hits. Often we will have fair warning and can work to kill or muddy the story. Sometimes we will get little to no heads up and will be forced to publicly respond to the attack or story.”

7. Nunn aims to win 30 percent of the white vote

Besides a heavy focus on driving up African-American and Latino turnout, the campaign set an internal goal of winning 30 percent of the white vote. The state Democratic Party is working with BlueLabs, an analytics firm run by former Barack Obama staffers, to assign every Georgia voter a score between 0-100 of their likelihood to vote Democratic.

“Support Scores and Persuasion modeling will help us find the white voters on the file who are more likely to support Michelle Nunn,” wrote pollster Diane Feldman. “For example, we may know that a young, urban white woman who is part of an international frequent-flyer program is more likely to support Nunn than an older white man in North Georgia who does not travel.”

For context, Feldman estimated that Democrat Roy Barnes won only 23 percent support from whites in his losing 2010 race for governor.

8. Nunn will tout a group of gun-owning supporters “in September or October”

Gun owners are a key constituency for Nunn, but the primary target is positive press. “It will allow the campaign to create messaging about Michelle Nunn’s moderate bona fides at a time when the Republicans are likely to be making her appear like a liberal,” one memo says. “Members of this group must have gun/hunting licenses. Depending on the size of the group and their names, this may become a newspaper advertising program or a tour just before hunting season begins.”

“We would create 4-5 small postcard-style mail pieces that incorporate Michelle and her family in rural settings with rural-oriented imagery,” the plan said.

They would mail them out before and after appearances in rural areas to “combat the notion that she is an Atlanta-based candidate uninterested in, or unfamiliar with, the rural parts of the state.”

The document includes three examples of such postcards that the firm made for now-Sen. Claire McCaskill during her successful 2006 run in Missouri.

10. “Currently, there are no plans to vet donors to the campaign”

Nunn announced this month she would return money donated to her by Virtual Murrell, who was convicted of bribery in 1995 and reportedly had ties to the Blank Panther Party. Her campaign said she was unaware of his background when he co-hosted a Capitol Hill fundraiser for her.

In December, a document explaining the research department’s role said it would “vet individuals with whom the campaign associates — most frequently for events and site visits.”

“This vet includes a check for criminal records, ‘bad news’ stories, and inflammatory statements that could reflect poorly on the campaign,” one of the memos said. “Currently, there are no plans to vet donors to the campaign.”